


to you, 2000 years from now

by mijimena



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, jean is here if you squint, mostly a self-indulgent time travel/reincarnation au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26152120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mijimena/pseuds/mijimena
Summary: Eren and Mikasa meet, then keep on meeting over centuries, oceans, and lifetimes.
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	to you, 2000 years from now

The third time I met you was at a 2-star restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden. It was a typical late-night dinner. Candle-lit, two people sharing a tiny piece of venison accented by sprigs of parsley. In between talking about his newest investments and the upcoming engagement party organized by our parents, my dinner companion clasped my hands from across the table, fervently exclaiming he felt like he “knew me from another life”. His teeth gleamed in the flickering candlelight, and I cringed a little at the parsley stuck between two horse-like incisors.

  
You stopped by the table at that moment, topping off our wine glasses.

  
“Anything else, sir and madam?” Your voice was intensely familiar, although I could swear I’ve never heard that quiet Northern European accent before in my life. Then-- oh. It wasn’t from this lifetime. It was from Germany 70 years ago and that one time we bought a white picket fenced house in the Chicago suburbs during the 1950’s...

  
There’s really no casual way to ask, “Hey, did I know you half a century ago? We owned a cat and a red Ford Thunderbird.” Instead, I kept my mouth shut, staring fixedly at the swirling dark liquid you poured from an expensive bottle. Condensation sparkled on the glass, reflecting light from your polished cufflinks. You had changed over the course of three lifetimes, trading a French military uniform for a salaryman’s polyester suit and now, crisply ironed dress slacks and white shirt.

  
I felt you watching our backs as we paid the check and gathered our coats. I got married later that summer and never saw you again. Did you regret it?

\---

That was one of the shorter instances we’ve known each other, as a waiter and patron in a restaurant. Even though there were to be decades we didn’t meet at all, we had also spent lives together, the same two people spanning different time periods and places.

On a crowded New York subway, 1997: You shivered involuntarily, hands stuffed in pockets of a threadbare suit jacket, foot tapping incessantly. It looked like a bad meth trip. Right before you stepped off the train, I caught your sleeve, asking, “Do I know you?” You shook my hand off, but bloodshot eyes widened in recognition as the doors slid closed. This time it would’ve never worked, a high school girl and middle-aged, salaryman addict.

  
Philharmonic hall, Berlin 1865: My seat was in Section D, Row 2, the same one I’d held through thirty-three concert seasons. I hadn’t met you in this life yet and wasn’t expecting to. The featured soloist was a new violinist who’d recently joined the orchestra--young, inexperienced, and of no great interest to me. But the moment you put bow to string, the notes that rang out spoke of an old friend. A love between two strangers, to be sure, but perhaps it was one of the purest. I don’t think you remembered me from that life; you were a rising star ready to take on the musical world, and I was old enough to be your grandmother.

\---

Countless lives passed like this. We were childhood friends in the American Midwest, high school sweethearts torn apart during the Russian Revolution, a research assistant and professor in shining NASA labs destroyed shortly after the Third Great War. During each new life, I had faint memories of the past, depending on how well we’d known each other in the previous. Sometimes it was just a passing glance on a busy street; I’d see a red scarf and be reminded of cannonfire from another century and familiar green eyes. I swear during one very weird lifetime, you took on the form of my beloved pet parakeet, a handsome fellow who I talked to daily up until his death when I was 12 years old. Of course, I could’ve just been a very delusional and lonely elementary schooler. There was no way to tell for sure, since we had a tacit agreement to mention the past as little as possible. The absurd phenomenon of the same two people meeting life after life was difficult to face, and I feared it would just one day cease to be if I thought about it too much.

But I came up with many theories about our strange history during one lifetime when I was stuck as a political prisoner in Vietnam. (And you were probably off somewhere on the other side of the planet, living happily as a stockbroker or a goldfish.) Perhaps everyone was stuck in the same reincarnation cycle, except we actually retained memories of the previous life’s events. Or conversely, we were the only two souls in the world and simply re-lived each love story that existed or could exist. We were essentially populating our own universe. Like a really bad romcom movie version of the Jungian collective consciousness theory? I wondered what would happen to us when those stories ran out.

In this present lifetime, I’m a psych major writing a graduate thesis about Carl Jung when I meet a very familiar barista at the university’s local Starbucks.

  
“Do I know you from somewhere?”

  
“Nice pick-up line, but no.”

  
“Isn’t your name Carl?”

  
“Who’s Carl?”

  
“A parakeet I owned about a century ago.”

  
You scoff, ring up my coffee, and tell me that was impossible.

  
Impossible or not, I later find your phone number scrawled on my cardboard coffee sleeve and think, _you liar_.

**Author's Note:**

> eren and mikasa are soulmates send tweet (also love myself some obscure pop psychology references)
> 
> written back in 2015 for a high school english class... I have never and will not apologize for handing in ap lit assignments that were just badly disguised fanfiction !!


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